Encouraging people to come to church yields ... Dominos Pizza?

Okay we can all calm down Mom and Dad. My valentines’ package has arrived. Just in time for Easter. I started laughing to myself when I found the hands today at the bottom of the box. I was like no way in heck am I going to put these around me. I think my companion was a bit confused when he saw them. Haha. I decided it would be better not to explain. Haha.

This week was a pretty good week. On Tuesday we had a zone meeting. It was super fun. Elder Huber is such a good zone leader. He loves to think outside of the box and make it fun. Usually the meetings are super boring and are just talks and then practices of how to teach. Elder Huber, however, changed the practices to be some fun activity. We also did a competition within the zone to bring the most people to church this Sunday (yesterday). The winners would get pizza. All the districts have 3 companionships in their districts except ours. We only have 2, so they put a companionship of 2 hermanas in our district who for some reason aren’t really part of any district (I think they report to the zone leaders). Anyway, we weren’t super into the competition, and we just called ourselves the “multi-district”. Come Sunday, it turns out we won! Haha. we destroyed the others. In total we had 25 people that came to church. Who knows how, but who cares! We are getting Dominos tomorrow! Haha.

Anyway, back to the serious work. So we were able to encourage this one guy to come to church for the second time. He is named Ambrosio. His sister was baptized a month ago and his son is a member. However, Ambrosio comes from a pretty sketch background. He really wants to get baptized, so hopefully he can make the right steps to have this “new life”.  He is super funny.  He also calls us his “hermanitos”.

Some family of the first counselor in our ward also came to church for the 2nd time. Wow. They seem like such sharp people. The daughter has gone a few times to church and the wife of the first counselor wants us to baptize her this week because she is going to girls camp and she will be a girls camp leader. She says it will be really good for her to be baptized while there. We will see what happens with her. I feel like it is kind of rushing it because we haven’t really taught her anything, but if she has a desire to get baptized, then we will help prepare her both now and after.

We also were able to get this other family to church. They have 4 kids, but only 2 of them came. At first they weren’t too interested, but after church on Sunday they said they could hopefully come next week for all 3 hours (even though it’s conference).

Speaking of conference... I am so excited! I hope that I can watch it in English this time because I am not a huge fan of voice overs. 

We are also doing Graciasaque Élvive initiative. It is like what we did for Christmas but for the holy week. It is super cool. Make sure to look at the video and share it with everyone. 

Everyone is off of school for the next 2 weeks for the holy week and I hear they do some type of reenacting of the crucifixion of Jesus (sorry I don’t remember how to spell things in English).

So that was my week.

Congrats Dad!!!! Wahoo! That made my day. Promoción! Va a ser el jefe. haha Jeff el jefe. Haha. I love seeing how the Lord blesses us with things like that. Like we almost moved to Chicago but stayed in Maine and now look at this!  

All right.  Well I should get going. Love you all!

-Elder Thomas

 

Loved your puppet picture. I pulled mine out of the box and am
looking for the right opportunity to use them in teaching.

Mexicans don't have bagels?!

Hola familia,

Tuesday was pretty fun. I think I told you that Elder Jordan is in my district from the MTC. So on Tuesday we did interchanges. I went to his area. It was pretty fun being with him. He is such a funny kid. We went to this super fancy panaderia. They had police officers outside of the place. We ended up buying this funnel cake thing. I was thinking about Whitney and I making them as I was eating it.

We also visited this other old lady who is very, very sick. We gave her a blessing. It was such a weird experience. Seeing someone who is so fragile and close to ending her life. The doctor said that she would die within the day, but she has managed to keep holding on a little longer. Seeing it was really sad, but I thought it’s more sad for us here on the earth to lose someone. For them, it’s just a part of the next phase. It made me think a lot about losing Clayton. I don’t think it was as hard for him to leave us as it was for us to lose him. Life really is super short.

On Thursday, I did interchanges with Elder Huber. He is so funny. It was super crazy to work with him as well this week. I’ve worked with half my district from the MTC. We contacted a ton and worked with a ton of members. So by Friday night, Elder Ibarra and I were a bit frustrated because we hadn’t had any success. The lady and her family who went to church this past week told us that she wasn’t interested and tried to give us back the Book of Mormon. It was so sad. We told her to keep it and to pray about it. We really tried hard to explain that Christ established His church, we lost it, but it is now restored. She just couldn’t understand it. She just would say the God is wherever we are. It was a big bummer, but if anything, we planted a seed.

So anyway, by Friday we had only 1 investigator. He is the father of a member and his sister was just baptized. He is in his 70s and has a lot of addictions. Other than him, we only had 2 others that said they MIGHT go to church. We had been working super hard, but we just weren’t seeing the success.

However, yesterday many people came to church. The two people that said they might go to church came on their own. That one guy also came to church. Also, three other people who are friends with members came as well. We had our ward conference so a bunch of people came to church. We have citas with these people this week. I am pretty excited because the people in this area who join the church are friends of members. They all seem like good people who could really progress. I know that when we show our faith and continue to work hard in our trials, God will bless us.

Last P-day we went to Costco. I bought muffins and bagels. I miss bagels soooo much! They don’t exist here. My companion was like “What type of donuts are those?” That made me mad. These poor Mexicans don’t have bagels. haha. There were so many rich people at Costco. Almost everyone had iPhones. It was weird. We also went to this tie factory place. It is pretty sketchy. We knocked on this black door. There are no windows and this guy opened the door. They just have boxes and boxes of ties. They have a ton of security cameras also. There were only two guys making ties. The ties however are pretty nice and only 45 pesos (like 3 dollars). I bought a few.

Yup, so that was my week. Hope you are all doing well. I love you guys!

-Elder Thomas

PS -- That is super sweet about your Book of Mormon challenge. I am in Omni right now.

Wow I can’t believe they changed the home teaching. We have been their home teachers for years. I miss Bibbers and I love Bart and Dawn Seymour. I actually just wrote them a thank you card from Christmas (I just got it a few weeks ago) and should get that in the mail tomorrow.

The area is good. Super small and the success here is working with the members. 

That is super cool about Aaron’s piano playing. The other day at the food, this guy put on Piano guys. They are sooo good! I have a few goals when I get home. 1. learn to play piano better.  2. learn to play guitar 3. maybe take a dance class. I also want to work at the Apple store and make money. haha. Anyway. Love you dad. You are the best. I am more and more grateful for your support ever day. Thanks for everything!

Love,

Tanner

Mexico city fresh air...

Hey there family,

So once again, there isn’t a ton to report. But I am still living.  Here I am still breathing in the Mexico City fresh air. Haha it’s not very fresh. I saw the moon the other day. It was super orange – either because of an eclipse or because of the pollution.

So a quick recap of the work. By Wednesday night we hadn’t found anyone that we could really teach. We were kind of bummed, but Elder Huber set a goal with us to find five people on Thursday to invite to church. We were running all over the place contacting everyone. We eventually found a family of five plus two other people who said they would go. I was super excited. (Before we left the house we prayed that we would be able to find at least five people that we could teach.) I was so grateful. When we really ask specific questions in our prayers, that is when we get specific answers.

There usually is a trend here with the people that say they will go. Only half the people that say they will go to church actually end up coming.  So we were able to help three people from the family come and one other lady come to church. I think these individuals really liked it yesterday. All the members were super nice and went to go meet them. They even helped them go to their classes. I don’t know these people super well yet but I really hope we can help them gain a real testimony of these (gospel) things.

So with that, Monica…lady who isn’t married... She is so good! Her son just passed the sacrament yesterday and he came in a suit. She came to church as well on her own in a dress and all. We had an interesting lesson with her yesterday. I wasn’t planning on going by but just decided to see how she was doing. I was asking her some questions about Joseph Smith and she didn’t really know about the restoration. I wasn’t exactly sure what she has been taught, but I told her we were going to start from the beginning with the things we teach. We also set goals with her such as reading the Book of Mormon ten minutes everyday and saying three prayers during the day. She was so happy with that. She knows that this Gospel can change lives, but she hasn’t been understanding the principles well. She started crying and told us how grateful she was for us. Even though she doesn’t understand everything, she really wants to get baptized. She has seen so many changes with her son. I hope we can find a way to help get her husband on board. He doesn’t really want anything to do with it.  It’s kind of a sad situation between them, but hopefully we can help them.

So yesterday, I saw a big semi truck crash. That was exciting. We were right next to it and all of a sudden I felt a rumble. I think the driver fell asleep at the wheel and hit the railing and destroyed the back part of the truck. It was pretty cool. Everyone was okay. 

So that was my week. Hope you are all doing well! I love hearing from everyone. Miss you!

-Elder Thomas

Arrived in Madereros

Hey family,

So not a lot about this week, but I’ll share a little about my area. My area is called Madereros. It is very much D.F. and is the smallest area in the mission. When I first got here I just thought, "There is no work to be done here. There are a ton of members" especially after Valle. However, I quickly realized how much work there is to do. In this small area, there are about 500 members on the lists. Probably only about 400 are still living here, but only about 100 are attending church. There are SO many menos actives [less actives]. There are also a lot of people who are ready to hear the Gospel. I hope to have a lot of success here. 

It is SO different here. The people think differently here and when they hear the message of the Gospel, they seem to be more open to it.

We have this one lady named Monica. She is so good. Her son was baptized a few weeks ago and he received the Priesthood yesterday. She really wants to get baptized, but she isn’t married and is living with her partner. He doesn’t want to learn about the church or get married. She will have to choose what she wants to do or convince her husband.  It is a tough/sad situation, but I am sure the Lord will make the path known to her of what she should do. 

We don’t have a lot of other investigators, but we have been working with the menos activos. We were successful in getting 4 people to return to church who haven’t attended in a few years so I was pretty happy with that. 

I am trying to help the ward here with their attitude and involvement in the work. We are trying to animate everyone about the work. We came up with a plan with our ward mission leader (yes we have one!). We want him to have counselors or helpers and then have a supervisor over every organization in the ward and then within every organization to have 2 ward missionaries, like a pyramid. Elder Huber (my zone leader) helped me come up with ideas. So that is my work right now. 

If I have advice for you all in this work it is to just get involved!  If you work with the missionaries, give them every reference you can think of, and be a missionary yourself, you can help a ton.  Sign up to work with the missionaries. Help them find people to teach about the church and always be willing to help the missionaries.

There is so much work to be done! Love you all!

-Elder Thomas

 P.S. Congrats Tyler and Nicki! I had a feeling it would be a girl. Super exciting!

End of my vacation in Valle de Bravo. ;-)

Sunset in Valle de Bravo on the night I left.

Well here I am, finally ending my vacation in Valle de Bravo. (Not true. not a vacation.  haha.) It was probably about time for me to leave because Saturday we went to visit this guy we found. He lives right on the lake and works at the docks. He said, "I was waiting for you. I was thinking we could go talk on my boat." Noooooo.  Talk about temptation. I told him that we can’t go in someone’s boat, but he did give me his number. So Dallin and Aaron, if we can come back to Valle in 14 months, he will take us out. The guy did come to church with us though! :)

Also, I found where the parachuters land. Right now they have the world competitions of hang gliding so a bunch of white people are arriving.

So anyway, this past week... On Tuesday we had a junta [interview] with President Whitehead and some other people. Mexico has set a plan to be more self sufficient for 2015 because most people here aren't. They explained the plan and it is pretty cool what they are doing. They have a bunch of classes and lessons to help people. We also talked about the things that we are going to do to teach people and reach our baptismal goals for the months of March and April. Wow it’s March?! After the junta, we weren’t going to return to Valle until later and since we didn’t have any food, President and his wife took my district out to lunch which was super fun :) 

There wasn’t a lot more that happened. We found some good people that could have some interest in the Church. We successfully encouraged this one lady who is super nice to go to church for the second time. Hopefully she can help her husband be interested as well.

So yesterday after church we went around to say goodbye to people. I went by Concepcion’s house and they were so sad. Concepcion wanted to protest. haha. They gave me a tie and they bought all this food. Then they got pizza. I felt bad because we were in such a rush, but I really am going to miss them.  I have grown so close to them in my time there in Valle. I visited them my first night in Valle and my last night. I am hoping to be able to get permission to go through the temple with them when they get sealed in December.

I really miss Valle right now. It really was feeling like home. Even though it drove me crazy, I miss it tons. So here I am now.  I was transferred. Where am I? After 4.5 months in a pueblo, the big city sure feels different. The people are so different. There is a ward here and I hear it’s pretty strong. Very different.  I am here with Elder Ibarra from Mexico. My first Mexican companion. Not going to lie, I am pretty nervous. I have been able to understand everyone for a while, but for some reason I don’t understand him very well. It is kind of awkward because he has more time in the mission than me, but I am senior companion and district leader.  I have Elder Huber as my zone leader again :) Also Elder Jordan from the MTC is in my district... Pray for me that I can help my new companion and stay happy!

Anyway, I love you all. Thanks for all your support. I miss you! Hope all is well!

-Elder Thomas

Elder Johnson and me. He is staying in Valle for another change. He will be a good elder.